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Seems the five biggest cities are mostly in the East, not the West. In fact, it lists the micrograms for LA as being 36 and New York as 22 and this was in 2002. I guess you could say Cairo is West, but it certainly is not in North America. Trinity, better have some real facts about the real polluters. Your generalization is false because it lacks chronological order. Look at your own website you gave; the list given is back in 2004. The references given below in footnote 2 shows China is a greater pollutant than America. Now, what is the UN going to do about it? Tax America with emission cap and trade and reward the Chinese by non-interference. What a great policy to end human pollution, you don't want to tick off the military power that has no concern about its own human rights violations.

Top Ten CO2 Producing Nations"Carbon Dioxide is a global problem, but the countries that produce the greatest amount per person are in North America, Europe and Australia. If Carbon Dioxide reductions are to be made, the lead has to be taken by people living in these countries. Most Carbon Dioxide in these countries comes from burning fossil fuels, such as coal, gas and oil to heat buildings (including homes) and transport. Of course, Carbon Dioxide is also given off by all living things, but in general plants capture as much as animals and micro-organisms generate. In contrast, Carbon Dioxide produced by burning fuel adds to the gases in the atmosphere and cannot be captured by plants."http://www.solcomhouse.com/toptenco2.htm

"The United States is the world leader, producing almost 25&#37; of the total CO2 emissions worldwide. China shows the most rapid increase in CO2 emissions, and Canada is the world leader in per capita CO2 emissions."http://www.coalitionforcleanair.org/...ming-faqs.html

It is in the interest of all the great industrial nations to solve this vital problem. There will be no winner but we will all be affected at the end.

The rich nations around the world have invested 5 trillions of dollars (5,000 billions) to save the american model (economy) from the bankruptcy. We can do the same thing with the Global Warning threat.

By the way, last week, the China has invested 100 billions more to help the world to come out of this economic mess.

The only country in the world who had no problem with his banks is my country. Our banking system was cited as a model to follow during the last G20. There is good ideas everywhere for escaping the Global warning, even from China.

I don't want China's money, I want Capitalism to win out, not socialism. Let the big companies fail, most of them have been run down by unions anyways. As far as the environment is concerned... CO2 emission by countries is one thing... put that in perspective of landm*** and you have some serious conflict. You also have to figure in things that counteract CO2 emissions, things like trees and forests. America has some great environmental resources protected in our national parks. You just reference the countries without context as to their landm*** and you belittle China's environmental impact.

China’s land m*** is 3,600,927 sq miles and is about 41,000 sq miles larger than the United States.
The population of China is about 1.32 BILLION people, representing almost a fifth of the earth’s population. A lot of CO2 from people, would you not say?

"Western Siberia is the world's largest peat bog, a one million square kilometer region of permafrost peat bog that was formed 11,000 years ago at the end of the last ice age. The melting of its permafrost is likely to lead to the release, over decades, of large quan***ies of methane. As much as 70,000 million tonnes of methane, an extremely effective greenhouse gas, might be released over the next few decades, creating an additional source of greenhouse gas emissions. Similar melting has been observed in eastern Siberia."

Forests

"Pine forests in British Columbia have been devastated by a pine beetle infestation, which has expanded unhindered since 1998 at least in part due to the lack of severe winters since that time; a few days of extreme cold kill most mountain pine beetles and have kept outbreaks in the past naturally contained. The infestation, which (by November 2008) has killed about half of the province's lodgepole pines (33 million acres or 135,000 km2) is an order of magnitude larger than any previously recorded outbreak and p***ed via unusually strong winds in 2007 over the continental divide to Alberta. An epidemic also started, be it at a lower rate, in 1999 in Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana. The United States forest service predicts that between 2011 and 2013 virtually all 5 million acres (20,000 km2) of Colorado’s lodgepole pine trees over five inches (127 mm) in diameter will be lost.As the northern forests are a carbon sink, while dead forests are a major carbon source, the loss of such large areas of forest has a positive feedback on global warming. In the worst years, the carbon emission due to beetle infestation of forests in British Columbia alone approaches that of an average year of forest fires in all of Canada or five years worth of emissions from that country's transportation sources.

Besides the immediate ecological and economic impact, the huge dead forests provide a fire risk. Even many healthy forests appear to face an increased risk of forest fires because of warming climates. The 10-year average of boreal forest burned in North America, after several decades of around 10,000 km&#178; (2.5 million acres), has increased steadily since 1970 to more than 28,000 km&#178; (7 million acres) annually. Though this change may be due in part to changes in forest management practices, in the western U.S., since 1986, longer, warmer summers have resulted in a fourfold increase of major wildfires and a sixfold increase in the area of forest burned, compared to the period from 1970 to 1986. A similar increase in wildfire activity has been reported in Canada from 1920 to 1999.

Forest fires in Indonesia have dramatically increased since 1997 as well. These fires are often actively started to clear forest for agriculture. They can set fire to the large peat bogs in the region and the CO2 released by these peat bog fires has been estimated, in an average year, to be 15&#37; of the quan***y of CO2 produced by fossil fuel combustion."

You just reference the countries without context as to their landm*** and you belittle China's environmental impact. The population of China is about 1.32 BILLION people, representing almost a fifth of the earth’s population. A lot of CO2 from people, would you not say?

Canada is eleventh per capita for the emissions of the CO2, and China has the ninety-one rank. The United States is just behind us at the tenth rank. Most of the people in China are living in the rural territories. We the Canadians have the second largest country in the world [after the Russia] and the life style is very high here. We are a bunch of avid consumers and we produce a lot of CO2.

In terms of actually viewing the pollution, I see your maps always demonstrate a national mentality rather than where the pollution actually resides. It suggests for me that New York, NY is no different than Sante Fe/Espanola, NM in your eyes. The map I gave at least demonstrates where the highest concentration of pollution is. Which is clearly in China as well as up around the New England states. Perhaps China is doing something about it. Legal abortions, even mandating them, will help cut CO2 emissions from less people breathing and using energy or buying products from industrial plants. They are the real comp***ionate ones.

Wanted to add one more thing...

You stated the following:

Your country and my country, together, we are causing much more pollution than China. Per capita we are four times higher than China.

If you recall, the landm*** of China is greater than the United States. So combining our landm***es together and saying we are producing more CO2 than China just dilutes the perception. We could take your argument further and add the whole world against China and get the same truthful statement that we all produce more than China in CO2 emmisions.

Last edited by Columcille; 04-16-2009 at 08:11 AM.
Reason: added quote and explanation

This time of year, many Americans are concerned with sunburns. In some areas, they should pay more attention to smog.

The reason? Though invisible, air pollution is a threat to 186 million Americans, according to a new report released by the American Lung ***ociation.

The annual report--State of the Air 2009--found that six in 10 Americans live in counties where ozone or particle pollution has reached dangerous levels. Both types of pollution can be deadly and have been linked to respiratory conditions like asthma, emphysema and bronchitis, and there is also evidence that particle pollution increases risk of heart attacks and strokes.

I wish they could make the facts more visual by a county by county color map.
The Forbes articles almost reads more like a columnist section rather than an actual news report. Besides, it seem almost restricted to just our country. How is China in comparison? What do they do for their citizens? I mean, they have socialized medicine. Are they spending even more money, or do they report their findings effectively?

I wanted to say one more thing about cost of saving in medicine. Everyone is going to die of something, is the costs that they are projecting for savings really just hyped up? I mean if they don't die from asthma, are they just as likely to die of cancer or heart problems or Alzheimers? I mean, if you look at the whole scheme of things, everyone is making their own projection of savings to the medical community should they pump money into their special project. In reality, it is only shifting the death toll to another desease. And let's not forget about the nature of insects to adapt to the environment and crop damages done by them alone. Farmers who protect their farms by pesticides save their crops better than the organic farmers who do not. If it was not true, farmers would save more money by not using pesticides and the organic farmers would make more profit. But let's face it, when we go to the supermarket... just exactly how much more do you pay for that head of lettuce by an organic farmer over those who are not? How much of an environmental impact is the pesticides to us in comparison to the pollution?

That Forbes article is a bunch of toe-the-line Obamamaniacs. Look at the article's solution--which is why it less newsworthy and more an opinion column--"A study done in 2007 by the South Coast Air Quality Management District found that achieving federal air quality standards in the Los Angeles area would cost $2.3 billion per year, but save $14.6 billion."

I'd like to see how many of the 12 board members are Democrats. Is it one party rule, or on occasions do the three appointed by government only make it 3/4 majority when a Republican appoints? Is this agency a grap for power. How do they use the funds? Do they contribute funds back to politicians? Do they pay lobbyists?

"We can drift along as though there were still a cold war, wasting hundreds of billions of dollars on weapons that will never be used, ignoring the problems of people in this country and around the world, being one of the worst environmental violators on earth, standing against any sort of viable programs to protect the world's forests or to cut down on acid rain or the global warming or ozone depletion. We can ignore human rights violations in other countries, or we can take these things on as true leaders ought to and accept the inspiring challenge of America for the future."-- Jimmy Carter

"We simply must do everything we can in our power to slow down global warming before it is too late. The science is clear. The global warming debate is over." --Arnold Schwarzenegger

"Our nation has both an obligation and self-interest in facing head-on the serious environmental, economic and national security threat posed by global warming."--John McCain

"All across the world, in every kind of environment and region known to man, increasingly dangerous weather patterns and devastating storms are abruptly putting an end to the long-running debate over whether or not climate change is real. Not only is it real, it's here, and its effects are giving rise to a frighteningly new global phenomenon: the man-made natural disaster. The issue of climate change is one that we ignore at our own peril. There may still be disputes about exactly how much we're contributing to the warming of the earth's atmosphere and how much is naturally occurring, but what we can be scientifically certain of is that our continued use of fossil fuels is pushing us to a point of no return. And unless we free ourselves from a dependence on these fossil fuels and chart a new course on energy in this country, we are condemning future generations to global catastrophe." -- Barack Obama

"The superior man seeks what is right; the inferior one, what is profitable."--Confucius

Wpw. they are so unbiased. Moderate Republicans who are spinless and leftist Democrats. They make great bedfellows. Just look at where they all stand on stem-cell research. Mmm. Didn't California spend a lot of money on embryonic stem cell research approved by Arnold? McCains stance was clearly the same as Obama, Obama lifted the Presidential executive order to ban such research. If they had the same concern over life, why do they destroy it?

"In Uniting America, some of the country’s most prominent social thinkers—among them Francis Fukuyama, Daniel Yankelovich, Amitai Etzioni, Alan Wolfe, Uwe Reinhardt, and Thomas E. Mann—reject the myth of polarization. On topics ranging from the war on terrorism, health care, economic policy, and Social Security to religion, diversity, and immigration, the authors argue that there are sensible, centrist solutions that are more in keeping with prevailing public sentiment and that would better serve the national interest.

On issue after issue, the authors show how the conventional framing of the debate in Washington has misled Americans, creating a series of false dilemmas and forcing choices between two extremes—at the expense of more balanced and pragmatic policy solutions based on enduring American values.

If there is, indeed, an expanding chasm separating the left and right in contemporary American politics, it exists largely as a specter employed by politicians more interested in manipulating voters than creating policies consistent with mainstream America's values. Editors Garfinkle, chairman of the George Washington University Ins***ute for Communitarian Policy Studies, and Yankelovich, founder and chairman of policy research organization Public Agenda, note America has rebounded from periods of great strife and disunity (the turbulence of the '60s and '70s, the Civil War), and the current divides aren't as bad as they could be. Essays examine topics from environmentalism to the war on terror and all conclude compromise is the key to finding acceptable ways to promote a healthy democracy. If the thesis sounds simple enough, the authors also dutifully bolster their case with a barrage of statistics and research (though a not unsubstantial portion of figures are supplied by Yankelovich's Public Agenda) to dispel the notion that the nation is being torn between two poles. Not a light read, the book will be appreciated and debated by scholars and those who work in public policy. Casual readers may soon find themselves in over their heads."

what is conservatism?

trinity, what is conservatism? If you could tell me what the Republican principles is, you would be closer to the answer than me. It used to be a party that stood for something, like a strong defense, limited government, and strong family values. It has been hijacked by the moderates and by the errosion of compromise from which those on the other side of the aisle have not compromised. McCain, Bush, and many of the leaders within the Republican party have not been about limited government but big spenders. Obama's upcoming budget, his continued efforts with the bailouts and "stimulus" spending is even more an error since he promised to go through it "line-by-line."

I veiw conservatism on the family level to be fiscally responsible to live within our means and pay off debt. Government has not been doing this at all for a long time. How is it that Obama, moderate Republicans and Democrats think that to get out of debt you have to spend even more money that we don't have?
How is borrowing money from China, who has their own pollution problems, going to help reduce pollution and at the same time get us out of debt? And if N. Korea hands terrorists the weaponry it needs to attack us and our allies from a dirty bomb going to help the environment? If you are as naive as Obama to criticize the intelligence agencies, reduce spending in defense, and say sorries to the world is going to change N.Korea, Iran, and the terrorists, you obviously fail to see how the criminal mind works in reality.

What is even more a gross error on your part is the attack of conservativism. The Catholic Church is a hallmark of conservativism. Catholicism is for pro-life, is against embryonic stem cell research, and such conservative principle is based on the sanc***y of life, on responsibility in both fiscal spending, in living within our means, and in family values that are against ****sexuality and other perversions from invading the home life. Tradition is conservative because it is long time practice of deep seated principles guided by the continued looking back at the Scriptures and in the authority of the Church's magesterium regarding right doctrine and right morals. We know in our daily lives looking at successful families that it is precisely because they follow conservative principles in fiscal responsibility and precautions such as setting boundaries, teaching children about the value of money rather than spoiling them and bailing them out, and other such things to chores and expectations or goal setting is successful conservative principle, even story telling helps solidify the family in bring it a sense of iden***y. If a family can practice this balance, then we should expect our elected officials to do the same... but they do not. Liberalism does not work in all its high ideals because they lack fiscal responsibility, they lack precautionary measures to secure the homeland (by strong defense) just as in the home if we live in a bad neighborhood one would expect a security system, fire alarms, and in really bad neighborhoods even gated doors and windows. Liberalism also attacks the iden***y of what it means to be an American. With all the apologies coming out of the mouth of Obama to the Middle East and to South America, he should also be telling them about the positive aspects of what America has accomplished so Americans can feel proud to be Americans even when we travel to their land for business or pleasure. If Obama wants to change the world positively, he should know the truthfulness of "speak softly, but carry a big stick" and "actions speak louder than words."

Last edited by Columcille; 05-31-2009 at 07:44 AM.
Reason: added quote about the Catholic Church.

The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and m***ive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.

The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. [...]

Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science," he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. "In that sense, our work is unique," he says.

The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. [...]

Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new ****yses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the "no policy" scenarios - that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes "unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction," he says. "Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming."

While the outcomes in the "no policy" projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, "there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated," Prinn says. "This increases the urgency for significant policy action." [...]

"There's no way the world can or should take these risks," Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quan***ies of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback "is just going to make it worse," Prinn says.
- MIT News

The worldwide economic crisis and the lowest price on the barrel of oil may give us the period we need to move the industrial countries to adopt the new technologies.

Trinity

In 1000 AD, Leaf Ericsson founded colonies on Greenland and present day Newfoundland, which he called Vinland because of the grapes that grew freely then. Many scientists claim the average temperature was 7 degrees warmer then than it is now. The polar bears survived this natural phenomena and will also survive this one.

In 1000 AD, Leaf Ericsson founded colonies on Greenland and present day Newfoundland, which he called Vinland because of the grapes that grew freely then. Many scientists claim the average temperature was 7 degrees warmer then than it is now. The polar bears survived this natural phenomena and will also survive this one.

Thanks,
TT

A very small bit of research would reveal to you that this may not be so. From Wikipedia (which has all the citations and research cited there), first the concerns:

The key danger posed by global warming is malnutrition or starvation due to habitat loss. Polar bears hunt seals from a platform of sea ice. Rising temperatures cause the sea ice to melt earlier in the year, driving the bears to shore before they have built sufficient fat reserves to survive the period of scarce food in the late summer and early fall. Reduction in sea-ice cover also forces bears to swim longer distances, which further depletes their energy stores and occasionally leads to drowning.Thinner sea ice tends to deform more easily, which appears to make it more difficult for polar bears to access seals. Insufficient nourishment leads to lower reproductive rates in adult females and lower survival rates in cubs and juvenile bears, in addition to poorer body condition in bears of all ages.

In addition to creating nutritional stress, a warming climate is expected to affect various other aspects of polar bear life: Changes in sea ice affect the ability of pregnant females to build suitable maternity dens. As the distance increases between the pack ice and the coast, females must swim longer distances to reach favored denning areas on land. Thawing of permafrost would affect the bears who traditionally den underground, and warm winters could result in den roofs collapsing or having reduced insulative value. For the polar bears that currently den on multi-year ice, increased ice mobility may result in longer distances for mothers and young cubs to walk when they return to seal-hunting areas in the spring. Disease-causing bacteria and parasites would flourish more readily in a warmer climate.

Problematic interactions between polar bears and humans, such as foraging by bears in garbage dumps, have historically been more prevalent in years when ice-floe breakup occurred early and local polar bears were relatively thin. Increased human-bear interactions, including fatal attacks on humans, are likely to increase as the sea ice shrinks and hungry bears try to find food on land.

And the info on predictions and the possibility of adaptation:

The U.S. Geological Survey predicts two-thirds of the world's polar bears will disappear by 2050, based on moderate projections for the shrinking of summer sea ice caused by global warming.(...)

Predictions vary on the extent to which polar bears could adapt to climate change by switching to terrestrial food sources. Mitchell Taylor, the director of Wildlife Research for the Government of Nunavut, wrote to the US Fish and Wildlife Service arguing that local studies are insufficient evidence for global protection at this time. The letter stated, "At present, the polar bear is one of the best managed of the large Arctic mammals. If all Arctic nations continue to abide by the terms and intent of the Polar Bear Agreement, the future of polar bears is secure.... Clearly polar bears can adapt to climate change. They have evolved and persisted for thousands of years in a period characterized by fluctuating climate."

(...) However, many scientists consider these theories to be naive (...) An additional risk to the species is that if individuals spend more time on land, they will hybridize with brown or grizzly bears.

A very small bit of research would reveal to you that this may not be so.

THE ACQUITTAL OF CARBON DIOXIDE
by Jeffrey A. Gl***man, PhD

ABSTRACT:

"Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere [historically] is the product of oceanic respiration due to the well-known but under-appreciated solubility pump. Carbon dioxide rises out of warm ocean waters where it is added to the atmosphere. There it is mixed with residual and accidental CO2, and circulated, to be absorbed into the sink of the cold ocean waters. Next the thermohaline circulation carries the CO2-rich sea water deep into the ocean. A millennium later it appears at the surface in warm waters, saturated by lower pressure and higher temperature, to be exhausted back into the atmosphere. Throughout the past 420 millennia, comprising four interglacial periods, the Vostok record of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration is imprinted with, and fully characterized by, the physics of the solubility of CO2 in water, along with the lag in the deep ocean circulation.

Notwithstanding that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, atmospheric carbon dioxide has neither caused nor amplified global temperature increases. Increased carbon dioxide has been an effect of global warming, not a cause. Technically, carbon dioxide is a lagging proxy for ocean temperatures. When global temperature, and along with it, ocean temperature rises, the physics of solubility causes atmospheric CO2 to increase.

If increases in carbon dioxide, or any other greenhouse gas, could have in turn raised global temperatures, the positive feedback would have been catastrophic. While the conditions for such a catastrophe were present in the Vostok record from natural causes, the runaway event did not occur. Carbon dioxide does not accumulate in the atmosphere."

The graph above represents temperature and CO2 levels over the past 400,000 years. It is the same exact data Al Gore and the rest of the man-made global warmers refer to. The blue line is temps, the red, CO2 levels. The deep valleys represent 4 separate glaciation/ice-age periods. Look carefully at this historical relationship between temps and CO2 levels (the present is on the right hand side of the graph) and keep in mind that Gore claims this data is the 'proof' that CO2 has warmed the earth in the past. But does the data indeed show this? Nope. In fact, rising CO2 levels all throughout this 400,000-year period actually *followed* temperature increases -lagging behind by an average of 800 years! So it couldn't have been CO2 that got Earth out of these past glaciations. Yet Gore continually and dishonestly claims otherwise. Furthermore, the subsequent CO2 level increases due to dissolved CO2 being released from warming oceans, never did lead to additional warming, the so-called "run-away greenhouse effect" that Al Gore and his friends keep warning us about. In short, there is little if any evidence that CO2 had ever led to increased warming, at least not when the levels were within 10-15 times of what they are today. -etl

You may find a few outliers/skeptics to the understanding of humans being responsible for climate change, but the fact remains that there is a vast majority, approaching scientific consensus, of scientists in related fields who accept the mainstream finding. For example:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human activity, fossil fuel burning and deforestation are responsible for most of the observed temperature increase since the middle of the 20th century. The IPCC also concludes that natural phenomena such as solar variation and volcanoes produced most of the warming from pre-industrial times to 1950 and had a small cooling effect afterward. These basic conclusions have been endorsed by more than 45 scientific societies and academies of science, including all of the national academies of science of the major industrialized countries.

With the release of the revised statement by the American ***ociation of Petroleum Geologists in 2007, no remaining scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of human influence on recent climate change.
-Scientific opinion on climate change

A 2004 essay by Naomi Oreskes in the journal Science reported a survey of 928 abstracts of peer-reviewed papers related to global climate change in the ISI database. Oreskes claimed that "Remarkably, none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position. ... This ****ysis shows that scientists publishing in the peer-reviewed literature agree with IPCC, the National Academy of Sciences, and the public statements of their professional societies."
-Consensus on climate change controversy

While the term "climate skeptic" generally refers to scientists taking good faith positions on the global warming controversy, climate change denial usually refers to disinformation campaigns alleged to be promoted and funded by groups with a financial interest in misrepresenting the scientific consensus on climate change, particularly groups with ties to the energy lobby.
-Climate change denial

In 1000 AD, Leaf Ericsson founded colonies on Greenland and present day Newfoundland, which he called Vinland because of the grapes that grew freely then. Many scientists claim the average temperature was 7 degrees warmer then than it is now. The polar bears survived this natural phenomena and will also survive this one.

Thanks,
TT

"The climate of the Earth is always changing. In the past it has altered as a result of natural causes. Nowadays, however, the term climate change is generally used when referring to changes in our climate which have been identified since the early part of the 1900's. The changes we've seen over recent years and those which are predicted over the next 80 years are thought to be mainly as a result of human behaviour rather than due to natural changes in the atmosphere."

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) – A Canadian astronaut aboard the International Space Station said on Sunday it looks like Earth's ice caps have melted a bit since he was last in orbit 12 years ago.

Bob Thirsk, who is two months into a planned six-month stay aboard the station, said he is mostly in awe when he looks out the window, particularly at the sliver of atmosphere wrapped around the planet.

"It's a very thin veil of atmosphere around the Earth that keeps us alive," Thirsk said during an in-flight news conference. "Most of the time when I look out the window I'm in awe. But there are some effects of the human destruction of the Earth as well."

"This is probably just a perception, but I just have the feeling that the glaciers are melting, the snow capping the mountains is less than it was 12 years ago when I saw it last time," Thrisk said. "That saddens me a little bit."

If Thrisk needs a sympathetic ear, he has 12 crewmates with him, at least until Tuesday, when visiting shuttle Endeavour astronauts are scheduled to depart.

The worldwide economic crisis and the lowest price on the barrel of oil may give us the period we need to move the industrial countries to adopt the new technologies.

Trinity

its the coldest winter ever....
When I was back in school in the early 1970s all the teachers were always warning their students of the coming ice Age.
Well, turns out thats something that we might be starting now.
The last 2 years have been very very cold...summers are getting shorter.....snow is staying longer....

record cold days, record snow falls ...and a stunning lack of activity on the sun lead me to believe that we are heading into a era of COLD......